Review: Anthems for Adventure - Tim and the Space Cadets

Tim Kubart, head of Tim and the Space Cadets, left the kindie band The Jimmies nearly years ago because he wanted to write and perform his own kids music.  Along with another Jimmies veteran, Matt Puckett, Kubart released an awesome video and 5-song EP in 2010 and slowly crafted the full-length debut, which gets released next week.

The result, Anthems for Adventure, is a big, sprawling, messy album.  I like to think of it as one of those big arena-ready albums you might have heard released in the '70s.  There are echoes of Elton John and the Eagles, mellow pop-rock for the kindie set, but there are some more indie sounds as well.  ("Bumblebee," for example, could be the shiniest song Clap Your Hands Say Yeah never wrote.)  Hand-claps and sing-along choruses (hi, there, "Superhero!"), it's an album whose songs are meant to be heard in concert.

When I say "messy," I don't mean sloppy.   I really liked the slow-building arrangement of "Endless Summer," about celebrating summer even in the midst of summer.  One of the standouts, "Upbeat/Downbeat," honors its theme of making music with a serious Motown-era groove.  And with more than a couple dozen different musicians making an appearance, there's a lot of musical firepower providing a miniature wall of sound.  My only warning is that the lyrics are very focused on the kids, celebrating their perspective (see, for example, "Double Knot," an emotional ode to an outsized pair of shoes).  Many folks will see this as an good thing -- and who could blame them? -- but if you prefer your kids music to take a more parent-inclusive approach lyrically, this probably isn't your first choice.

The album is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 8.  You can hear some of the tracks at the band's website.  Anthems for Adventure might be the most apropos kindie album title of the year as it's filled with songs about explorations large and small, songs to be sung along with.  Tim and the Space Cadets wear their corduroy-patched heart on their sleeve; sympathetic adventurers will enjoy this spirited celebration.  Recommended.

[Disclosure: I received a copy of this album for possible review.]

Review: Billy Kelly - AGAIN!

The kids music scene is, as a general rule, a good-natured one.  Mopey musicians are few and far between and, frankly, get shunned a bit by the rest of the community.  Even if you're dealing with serious issues, be it in song or with the world at large, if you don't have a sense of humor -- broad or subtle -- you're not going to last long.

Amidst these humorous folk, only one person can hold the title Funniest Person in Kids Music.  Oh, sure, Jack Forman and all of the Recess Monkey fellows are like our own Laugh-In, Lunch Money's Molly Ledford deserves her own East Coast observational comeday version of Portlandia (Columbiandia?), and Doctor Noize's Cory Cullinan still writes the newsletters with most jokes.  And let's not forget the Media Division -- Sirius-XM's Mindy Thomas and OWTK.com's Jeff Bogle could co-captain our comedy softball team and we'd definitely hold our own against the musicians.  (You hear that, musicians?  We'll totally take you on in comedy softball.  Whatever that is.)

But let's take a moment to praise Pennsylvania's Billy Kelly, Funniest Person in Kids Music.  He's just released his fourth album, AGAIN!, and our favorite writer of odes to milk and boxes is back with odes to bonsai (the Japanese art form using miniature trees), dogs, sweaters, and butter.  Seriously, there's a song called "Ode to Butter," all harmonied and everything.  Kelly's humor doesn't derive from jokes, it's more absurdist in nature.  The title "Don't Tell Me That I Don't Know What I Know (When You Know That You Don't Know What I Know That I Know)" tells you just about everything you need to know about the song (believe it or not, the song gets even more absurd than the title).

On his last two full-lengths, Kelly went from slightly dark and very absurdist to rootsy and mosty earnest.  AGAIN! is an attempt to steer between those two extremes; I'd probably put the new album at one-thirds very absurdist / two-thirds mostly earnest, drawing upon a broader range of styles (Hi, Autotune! Hi, Talking Heads!).  Trying to pick a favorite song here is difficult -- is it one of the more uplifting songs of the year ("Jigsaw," describing how life is a puzzle that eventually comes into focus) or the very enthusiastic horn-aided "You Made Me a Sock Monkey"?  Or maybe it's Kelly's take on ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky," during which one soaring operatic voice sings, "Ohhhh, it's an opera!"

The 32-minute album is most appropriate for ages 5 through 9, but, really you just need to have a sense of humor.  AGAIN! is an album that had me smiling throughout much of it, and it's not just because it's funny.  It's because Kelly's joy in his song's characters comes through crystal clear.  That's what makes these songs so fun.  Highly recommended.

Review: Blue Clouds - Elizabeth Mitchell and You Are My Flower

How to sum up the latest album from Elizabeth Mitchell and You Are My Flower, the dream-soaked Blue Clouds?

I suppose one could start with that adjective, "dream-soaked."  From the song lyrics (the frog and mouse courtship and wedding of "Froggie Went A-Courtin'" or the dogs running around in "Yuki (Snow)") to the album art from renowned author and artist Remy Charlip to the arrangements featuring Mitchell's direct and gentle voice and strings and flute, among others, the entire album seems suffused with sleepy imagery and feelings.

Or perhaps it's with a bullet-point recounting of the high points on the album:

• The total feeling of empathy generated by her cover of Bill Withers' "I Wish You Well."
• The title track (a lullaby written by Mitchell's husband Daniel Littleton), which wraps up the album and is an instant modern classic
• Her version of "Everyone," which recasts Van Morrison's joy-filled song into something akin to a blessing.

I could always compare and contrast with Mitchell's previous work.  It's definitely more varied in scope than Little Seed, her fine Woody Guthrie tribute album from this summer.  For the listeners to Sunny Day who wished that Mitchell front-and-center more often in that album, instead of ceding lead vocals to daughter Storey on some tracks (I was perfectly fine with the shift as I saw what Mitchell was aiming at in being part of the Folkways tradition), they will find the mix more like You Are My Little Bird -- the kids are integrated nicely on the tracks, but it's Mitchell show.

Or I could be very technical about the whole thing: 38 minutes in length, best for ages 3 through 9, more album details here or stream some songs here.  Don't forget the physical packaging, typically Smithsonian-awesome, featuring Charlip's artwork, an introductory essay from author and artist Brian Selznick, and nice liner notes from Mitchell herself.

But instead the word I keep drifting back to is that of family.  Mitchell's immediate family -- her, husband Daniel, daughter Storey -- who have always been at the heart of this whole enterprise and her approach to making a living as a musician in this field.  Her extended family -- Brian Selznick not only writes a generous introduction, but it's dedicated to his friend Remy Charlip and the mother of his goddaughter Storey; her sister-in-law Anna Padgett writes a couple songs on the album.  Her super-extended Folkways family -- Smithsonian heroes Ruth Crawford Seeger and Ella Jenkins inspire tunes.  And my own family, who have been listening to Mitchell's music for more than a decade and have spent many (hundreds of) hours with her music.  Mitchell pulls us all in and, for a moment, makes us feel connected before sending us back into the world to be as generous with others as she has been with us.  Highly recommended.

Review: Binary - The Board of Education

Geek.

Nerd.

Dork.

Words that once carried a stigma are now bandied about with pride by many.  What are the increasingly subdivided niches of fans and supporters of pop culture but collections of nerds celebrating their own weirdnesses? (Note: not a slam.  After all, I am a kids music aficianado.  I know from celebrating tastes not fully embraced by the mainstream.)

Enter Seattle's The Board of Education.  If Recess Monkey and Caspar Babypants are the hardest-working artists in kindie music, cranking out albums in about the length of time it takes me to write this review, then their Kindiependent compatriots The Board of Education in are there to even out the average.  Their just-released album, Binary, follows their debut album by 4.5 years.

Perhaps it takes the band so long because chief songwriter Kevin Emerson and his bandmates are each getting advanced degrees on the topics covered in their songs -- the breakup of the Soviet Union ("Welcome Back!/Geography Quiz!"), Kevlar inventor Stephanie Kwolek ("Know Your Inventors, Part II"), or variable specific impulse magneto-pulsar rockets ("VASIMR (To Mars!)," natch). (No advanced degree is needed to enjoy the Star Wars-themed rant/plea "Why Is Dad So Mad?".)  All of which would be deadly dull except you can tell that the Board of Education really likes the topics at hand, and they know their way around a pop hook.

Hidden behind that brainy veneer, however, is also an appreciation for how humans make their way through the world.  Sometimes it's the chief topic of a song, such as on the delicate "Three," about a young elementary schooler navigating changes in friendship.  Elsewhere, such as on "Binary" or the totally and utterly awesome "I'm Not Here Right Now," the band merges those human understandings with geekier topics.  For an album filled with a bunch of space-related themes, it's remarkably down-to-earth.

The album will be most appropriate for kids ages 5 through 11.  You can hear a number of tracks from the album at the band's Bandcamp page.

So let's celebrate the obsessives, the adults (and kids) burning with curiosity about the world around them, be it light-years away, or at the school cafeteria -- The Board of Education gets you.  And you, obsessive (or parent of an obsessive), should you choose to discover the band, you might just find another obsession.  Highly recommended.

Review: Can You Canoe? - The Okee Dokee Brothers

I know, I already reviewed the album for NPR.  But it's always good to get a few more words in.

***

It could have been -- it should have been -- a gimmick.  The Okee Dokee Brothers, the Minneapolis duo of Joe Mailander and Justin Lansing, heading down the Mississippi River in a canoe for a month, just the two of them, with the goal of producing an album's worth of river/exploration songs by journey's end.

But the resulting album, Can You Canoe?, exceeds all expectations in its breadth and scope, its heart and humor.  Their take on the traditional "Haul Away Joe," featuring The Band's Garth Hudson, tempts me to pull out every synonym for "joyful" in my thesaurus -- boisterous, rousing, or, perhaps most appropriately given the nautical theme of the album, buoyant.

In its boisterousness, "Haul Away Joe" is probably more the exception than the rule on the album, with songs tending more toward the contemplative, such as "Thousand Star Hotel," or "Small and Simple," featuring Elizabeth Mitchell.  The opening title track is the gentle invitation to exploration that serves as the throughline of the album.  What happens on the river doesn't stay on the river -- it sticks with you for a long time.  And it's not so much the big things as it is the small, such as the animals and bugs (see "The Bullfrog Opera" and "Rosita").  And while there's certainly a time and place for solitude in nature, one often needs companions to make that exploration work, a theme emphasized by "Haul Away Joe" and "Along for the Ride," which features Rachel Loshak.  Producer Dean Jones does a nice job directing traffic and filling out the Brothers' Americana sound.

Justin and Joe didn't actually canoe down the river by themselves -- they had a couple other folks along helping out and filming a DVD with interviews and music videos packaged with the CD.  There's nothing essential about the DVD -- if for whatever reason you prefer the digital mp3s, you and your family can probably get along with out it -- but it's certainly a step above most bonus DVDs.  (Most of the footage is now available on the band's YouTube channel.)

The album is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 9, but the album approaches Dan Zanes and Elizabeth Mitchell territory in terms of its being truly suitable for all ages.  Can You Canoe? is wide-eyed in the best sense, and easily one of the best kids albums of the year.  Highly recommended.

Review: Adventures of Chicken Weebus (Volume 1)

For a variety of reasons, it takes me longer to get to story reviews.  I apologize, therefore, that I didn't write this review three months ago.  My bad.

So let me introduce to you Chicken Weebus, a plucky little chicken -- more like a chick, really -- whose adventures in The Town There are the funniest audio plays you and your family will hear all year.  Chicken Weebus is the brainchild of husband-and-wife producers Karl Hirsch and Lauren Proctor.  Adventures of Chicken Weebus (Volume 1) collects the first four stories they wrote and recorded with a fine cast of talented voice actors, and it's a great way to amuse your kids (and maybe you) for more than an hour.

Trying to explain Chicken Weebus too much would be to diminish the slightly absurd joy and probably make it sound dorkier than it really is.  Think of Chicken Weebus as akin to a slightly-less-worldly Kermit the Frog -- the straight man (albeit with a dry sense of humor) amidst a large cast of characters, many of whom are, like, Gonzo or Animal, crazy in their own little ways.  It's that interplay between the nasally Weebus and the rest of the town (like Officer Longneck, the slow-talking cop, or the self-important narrator) that makes these plays so much fun.  Each story does have a lesson for the listeners to learn, but it's doused with sufficient cheese sauce that the broccoli is easily digested.  And the characters break the fourth wall and have just a tiny bit of knowing attitude just enough that the age range for these stories goes up higher than you might think.  My favorite of the stories is "City Chicken, Country Chicken," but there isn't a weak link.

The stories are most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 10.  You can preview the four main stories on the CD -- and download the entire first story for free -- here.  You can download the stories; the CD also includes interstitials not available for download -- they're funny, though not essential.

Adventures of Chicken Weebus (Volume 1) is a smartly-conceived and well-produced set of audio stories.  Funny, smart, and knowing without being smart-alecky, I can see these stories becoming a well-loved part of many families' car trips and lazy afternoons.  Bring on Volume 2!  Highly recommended.